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Monday, 14 November 2016

Hobby update - 14/11/16 - Fluffageddon fallout and yet more building!

Greetings all,
welcome to another week, and another look at the inner workings of my hobby.

As you may or may not know, this weekend I attended Fluffageddon at The Outpost in Sheffield. The shop itself was great, and the guy in charge on the day was extremely friendly, knowledgeable and an all-round top bloke.

As for the event itself, well, I may as well just admit this one right now. I lost. Everything. All three of my games, and I came bottom of the pile of 16 players on the day. I'm going to try and not sound like a whinging loser at this point, but I feel confident that all three of my opponents would back me up and say that my dice/tactical cards abandoned me for the day. It got so bad that my wooden spoon prize for coming last was actually a set of new dice!

Game 1

Game 1 was against Alex's Space Wolves - a really nice list balancing a couple of grey hunter squads, some thunder wolves, blood claws, terminators and a flyer. Turn 1 was a turn of extremes, I scored all three of my tactical cards, though to do so I had to send a stealth team to their deaths for the greater good, claiming an objective in front of the wolf lord and his thunderwolf cavalry. On the downside however, all the shooting from half my army failed to get a single wound onto the thunderwolves, whilst the other half of the army was required to take a single hull point from a Rhino.

Things evened out a little after that in the damage stakes, with particular high points being the breachers wiping out some grey hunters (only to be massacred in turn by the other GH squad) and the terminators going down to a hail of fire having killed two crisis suits, but whilst Alex was able to keep scoring cards for his objectives, I consistently drew the claim objective cards that were firmly in Space Wolf hands.

Game 2Game 2 I was confident couldn't go that badly again, I would be on the bottom table so surely I'd be facing a list that had done badly in game 1 as well. So it turned out, though a fully mechanised Blood Angels army was not what I expected. A tactical squad in a Rhino and a full sniper squad fulfilled the troops requirements whilst a Land Raider Crusader full of vanguard vets, a chaplain and a techmarine, a pair of predator annihilators and a pair of baal predators filled out the list. Didn't seem quite so fluffy I thought, but hey ho, my stealth cadre should make short work of the vehicles.

Nope. I lost most of the stealth suits to heavy bolters on turn 1, with a string of poor 3+ saves. I did manage to take down the vehicles eventually, though lost my hammer head to a desperate ram attempt late in the game and watched appalled as a full 12 man squad of fire warriors took three full turns of shooting into the rear armour of a predator annihilator to take its hull points, leaving them badly out of position and unable to claim an objective on the last turn without running a long way (which of course they didn't). My breachers were in prime position to make a mess of the vanguard squad, but somehow despite doing nine wounds to them, my opponent proceeded to pass 9 3+ invulnerable storm shield saves, before charging back in and butchering them in the next turn.

Game 3

After a bit of confusion who I was supposed to be playing, I ended up facing an AdMech list in game three, not only that, but one that had won their first game, so game 2 must have gone very badly wrong for my opponent!

Just to make matters worse, this was a game where you scored points equivalent to the value of units you had destroyed, or half points for a unit half destroyed.

Despite having a few tools in my locker to hurt the Robbie the Robot lookalikes, once again the dice decided to give me a swift, firm kick in the nuts. I took down the dunecrawler early thanks to my stealth cadre, then started in on the smaller unit of robots. Missiles stripped a wound, then the Hammerhead opened fire with its Ion Cannon. Two hits resulted in a single wound, with only the invulnerable save of the robots to rely on. Of course it was passed. On a '6', which meant the shot bounced back and hit the front armour of the Hammerhead. Of course, another '6' meant my own tank had glanced a hull point off itself! Oh well, at least it wasn't the last hull point!

The dice didn't get any better in this game, and over two turns, my 'vaunted' crisis team of 3, each with a 2-shot missile pod, managed a quite frankly appalling 2 hits on the robots. A crushing loss was inevitable, especially when the other numbers from my force were whittled down.

All in all, a thoroughly demoralising day in terms of results, though I must say all three of my opponents were nice guys, gaming against Alex finally being a particular highlight, and my last opponent was also particularly fun to play against.

I think Matt learned quite a lot about what people considered to be 'fluffy' and 'avoiding downright filth' when the winning list included at least 8 ranged d-weapons, 10 warp spiders, the mandatory scatter laser jetbikes and, erm, despite the following passage taken from the Eldar wikia, no guardians at all.

In some Craftworlds, Ulthwé foremost amongst them, the Guardians are the most common of all Eldar warriors.

That being said, I'd definitely go back again next year, just with a slightly different concept on what to do with my list, and more importantly, some new dice!

Right, onto proper hobby stuff then! Last week I had been building plenty of stuff, my clippers and glue taking a right battering, and this week that has continued.

First up is the third Dusk Knight drop pod - this will initially be utilised by a devastator squad until such time as I can buy a fourth!

The pod is now undercoated and ready for paint, though I might not be enthusiastic enough just yet to get going. It may also be a good model to start working with a basic airbrush that's been donated to me by a friend.

Next up then was Sergeant Alarico of Squad Tercero. As with all the Dusk Knight Sergeants, I've modelled him with a power fist, and I've magnetised the excellent combi weapon kit so that if I change my mind later I can always swap parts out. I've also gone with a back banner again to match the other Tactical Squad sergeantsReyes and Gonzalo. This time though I've used a Black Templars upgrade kit banner, so we've got some nice Templar crosses splashed around on it.

For anyone who's interested, the power fist is from the old masters of the chapter kit (and it's metal!).

The base is junked up with a forge world bolter and the pilot's vision guard from the landspeeder kit.

Lastly, I've taken the decision, unusually for me, to go with a bare-head for this model. Definitely not my usual style, but I'm getting more confident with painting skin tones (as you'll see later) so a little extra practice wouldn't hurt.

The first of the bike squad is really getting close to being finished now, I need to do a few more leather details, then I'll weather it and get some kind of symbol or legend on the banner.

I've also done a little more work on the flamer marine from Squad Segundo, going back and layering the Rakarth Flesh on the armour panels and blocking in the first layer of Brass Scorpion. The main triumph here however was the head.

Speaking as someone who tried to avoid painting skin tones if possible, I'm quite pleased with how this guy turned out.

Top Tip: Don't use black for the irises in the eyes, rhinox hide (brown) looks much more effective.

Once this guy gets some leadbelcher on him we'll nearly be there with just a few highlights left.

After that (and the tournament result) I indulged myself with a little retail therapy, picking up this Neophyte Hybrid kit and Chimera boxed together.

This represents a great deal from GW at £35 RRP. Given that an Imperial Guard Chimera costs £22.50 and the Infantry Squad £18, you're saving £5 off the total price even without the inclusion of the Cult upgrade sprue. I of course didn't buy direct from GW, instead picking it up for a meagre £28 thanks to the 20% that The Outpost take off GW prices.

Strangely, despite over 20 years in the hobby and having started a Guard army before, I've never actually built a Chimera before so it was a nice detour from all the marine stuff I've been working on recently. The kit was a joy to put together actually, with the majority of parts being nice and snug, and very little cleanup required.

That being said, there are quite a few fiddly sections so don't expect it to go together in 15 mins!

As I had previously indicated, I decided to make the kit as flexible as I could, and so out came the magnets, which got drilled into the Commander's neck, allowing me to swap out the standard Cadian head for a suitable headphoned Genestealer Cult version.

If the airbrush doesn't get used on the drop pod, it almost certainly will get used here instead!
Finally, also on the Genestealer Cult side of things, I began work on the Patriarch, testing out a few styles I'm thinking about using on him first up.

I've had to mix up a basecoat Darker than Khorne red, so went roughly 60:40 Khorne Red and Abaddon Black, then used a pure Khorne Red to provide a first highlight on the majority of the chitinous areas. I then blended this up to Mephiston Red round the very edges, and I'll be working on wash/glaze colours for the ribbed areas next.

The one part of the model I'm not happy with at the moment is the claws, which I think push the red a little too far on the model, so I'll be re-starting those back in a classic bone colour.

Thanks for reading all! Next post will be an update on either Instagram and some of the accounts I like to follow the most, or the Genestealer Cult list I've been working on. I will also look at posting up my new Tau list following on from Fluffageddon for you all to see. Excuse the language, but here's a meme I created to explain how I felt about taking a fluffy army and then seeing the other armies arrayed at the event.